


Cultivation

by R00bs_Teacup



Series: Gardening [1]
Category: The Musketeers (2014)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Modern Setting, M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-04-24
Updated: 2017-04-24
Packaged: 2018-10-23 15:35:03
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,541
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/10722195
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/R00bs_Teacup/pseuds/R00bs_Teacup
Summary: Trying to connect, Aramis is living far away, there's gardens, there's sun, Aramis is sad. There's a puppy! And cuddles!





	Cultivation

**Author's Note:**

> Thanks Glim for the title 
> 
> WARNINGS: grief and grieving, sad Aramis,

Porthos slept on the bus, propped up against his backpack, foot up on the raised bit for the wheel. The driver watched him and started to laugh when Porthos’s eyes flew open, his arm flailing to hit the button. He slung his bag onto his shoulder and swayed down the bus, arriving just as the doors open (five metres beyond the bus stop), issuing out tossing a vague but genuinely grateful ‘ta muchly’ as he bounced down. The doors shut behind him with a hiss and then… silence. Porthos looked about. There wasn’t anything around, just a road and some trees and lots of fields. As he stood there, a tractor came up the road dragging a giant load of potatoes behind it. Porthos jumped back out of the way and looked about again. Lots of birds. Lots of… rabbits. Porthos shrugged and made himself comfortable on the verge. After forty minutes Porthos gave up and got to his feet, starting the long walk. 

He got lost. Twice. Google maps saved him but only by taking him through fields. Muddy fields. Steep fields. He ended up in a churchyard and for a second the silence and the heat and the nothingness around him made him dizzy with unreality. Then he caught sight of a familiar figure, sat on a bench, head hanging. Porthos went and dropped onto the bench next to Aramis letting his bag fall, huffing out a dramatic breath. He was sweaty and hot and had just walked five miles. He grinned anyway, waiting for Aramis to slowly lift his head to see who had intruded on his peace. 

“Oh shit,” Aramis said. 

“Yup,” Porthos said. 

“It’s…” Aramis said.

“Two thirty,” Porthos said. 

“Huh,” Aramis said. 

“Yup,” Porthos said. Aramis wrapped his arms around Porthos, embracing him, burying himself into Porthos’s shoulder. “Hello.”

“It’s so good to see you,” Aramis said.

“Clearly.”

Aramis didn’t answer that, just held Porthos tighter. Porthos noticed the flowers, resting on the bench the other side of Aramis. He waited for Aramis to stop shaking, though, before mentioning them. He nudged Aramis when he was steadier, and Aramis nodded, but then was already shaking his head and slumping forwards, elbows on his knees again. 

“Couldn’t do it,” Aramis said. “Twelve years and I’m still just sitting here like a lemon. I come other times, you know? Just this date gets me.”

Porthos put a hand over Aramis’s heart and gave it a warm rub then got up and scooped the flowers off the bench, weaving his way among the gravestones. He had to check each stone before he found the right ones, he had never been here before. Aramis had told him of it but never invited him. Porthos eventually found them. Ten of them, in a row. Aramis’s men. Porthos separated the flowers and added a small bunch to each grave, already thick with offerings. Twelve years felt like nothing, not to family, Porthos knew that. He paused for longer on the tenth, on Marsac, Aramis’s 2IC. He rested a hand on the stone and gave a fervent prayer of thanks for Marsac keeping Aramis safe that day. Then he headed back to Aramis, and held him through the shuddering and trembling that followed. 

“I left you at the bus stop,” Aramis said, eventually, stuffy and hoarse. 

“Oh yes,” Porthos said. 

“Made you walk.”

“Yes,” Porthos agreed, shifting with a grimace. “Which is why I’m gonna be totally insensitive and suggest carrying on grieving at your house, where I can get out of my binder.”

“Yeah, ok,” Aramis said. 

He stood, still not entirely steady, and took Porthos’s hand. Porthos gently shook him off, hoiked his rucksack back onto his shoulders and let Aramis take his hand again. The village was very small, only about fifty houses, but it was strung out along a country lane and it was another half mile before Aramis stopped in front of a picturesque, rambling house, set back from the road. Aramis’s beat up old VW bug stood out on the drive, a gate behind it overgrown with honeysuckle and brambles. Aramis wandered along at Porthos’s side, hanging onto his hand, head down. He was vague and half-absent, Porthos was used to that just not the location. He had to give Aramis a few nudges to get keys. 

“I don’t lock it, no one locks stuff,” Aramis said, bumping into Porthos as they wove through the gate. 

The door was indeed unlocked. It opened onto a cool room, a bench along one wall, shelves. A mess of wellies and boots and shoes cluttered the floor around the shelves. Porthos noticed that Aramis had bare, muddy bare feet. Porthos took his shoes off and opened another door, an old iron latch keeping it shut. This one opened onto a kitchen, long and wide and full of windows, french doors opening onto a small patio. Aramis let go Porthos’s hand and walked to a kettle and a sink, filled the one from the other, then leant on the sideboard and looked just to the left of Porthos’s face. Porthos looked around for somewhere to set his bag down but got distracted by the sound of claws on tile. He beamed and dropped his bag where he stood, hurrying to the door on the far end of the kitchen, behind a wood table, arriving at the same time as a golden retriever puppy. 

“Oh, Aramis!” Porthos said, kneeling, sweeping the puppy into his arms to get his face licked, arm thumped by the wagging tail, ears deafened by happy yelping barks. 

“That’s Eldoro, she’s not mine,” Aramis said. Porthos didn’t much mind whose she was so long as she was happy in his arms, which she was. “Are you having coffee?”

“Yeah, gracias,” Porthos said, absently, hands in the dog’s fur, humming, pleased and content to just sit on the cold tile floor in the sunshine. 

Aramis gave a low chuckle, sounding more present, and Porthos looked up. The sun had caught Aramis’s face, and he looked soft and worn, older than Porthos had noticed before. Porthos got up off the floor and went to him, Eldoro padding at his heels. Porthos took Aramis’s face in his hands and tipped it up, examining it, taking in the lines and paleness and the dark shadows beneath his eyes. 

“You look so sad,” Porthos whispered, running a thumb over Aramis’s jaw. He pulled Aramis’s hair back, away from his face, laying Aramis bare and open. Aramis winced but didn’t try to hide again. He looked baldly up at Porthos’s, pain, long nights, bad dreams, all right there in his eyes. “Are you better, here?”

“Not really,” Aramis admitted. 

“Then come home.”

“I can’t. I need to be here,” Aramis said, frustration bleeding through him and soaking up the give in him, his head tugging out of Porthos’s hold and ducking again, hair falling across his face. Porthos sighed. 

“Then stay,” Porthos said. “I don’t understand, and I can’t help asking because I really miss you, but if you need to be here, then be here. Were you making tea?”

“Yeah,” Aramis said, sniffing and rubbing at his face with the back of his hand, at his eyes. “Um, I can do it.”

“Sit. Eldoro, cuddle Aramis. I’m making tea,” Porthos said, rolling up his sleeves. 

He found a mug on the draining board and began a systematic search of cupboards for tea. He expected a big box, because Aramis was nuts about tea, but instead he finds two entire draws given over to neatly partitioned organization, different teas colour coded and carefully stored. Porthos picked out a calming relaxing one and checked for caffeine before making it up and adding honey from the fridge. Aramis always kept honey in the fridge, for some reason. Porthos took the tea over and set it in front of Aramis. 

“Point me to the loo, I want out of this binder,” Porthos said. 

The bathroom, on the second floor, was big. There was a bath, no shower, a floor to ceiling wardrobe more suited to a bedroom, a sink, a toilet. Porthos found himself measuring things up and running his eye over, checking for damage, toting up the work that might need doing, what he might do this weekend while he was here. He stopped himself and undid his cardigan and shirt, fighting himself out of the two binders he had on. He panted for a while and used a washcloth, found in the wardrobe among a messy tangle of towels and sheets, to wash away the sweat and cool the heat rash he’s been getting. He waited until his breathing eased before putting a binder back on, then stood, hoping the twinges in his back and side would ease again and abate. Waiting. Breathing. Someone banged on the door, making him start. 

“Aramis! Come on, I have to piss, just open the door you can weep while I relieve myself,” came a low, grouchy voice. There was a vicious bang on the door and Porthos felt his heart thud painfully. He tugged the binder back off, unable to bear the dizzy breathless feeling or the pain. “Open the door, you twat, come on come on.”

Porthos pulled his shirt on and opened the door. The man on the other side took a surprised step back, missed his footing, and would have gone tumbling down the stairs had Porthos not instinctively grabbed him. Porthos pulled him back to safety, grabbed his binders and his cardigan, then waved expansively at the bathroom behind him. The man ducked past and inside, slamming the door. Porthos returned to the kitchen. Aramis had become enmeshed with the table in the time Porthos was gone and was crying again, shivering, hands clenched against the wood. Porthos gave his shoulder a rub and his head a pat and went to make himself a coffee. He found expensive, rich coffee beans, and considered making a pot, but he decided instant would do for the moment. He added an extra spoon and went to sit with Aramis, resting his hand between Aramis’s shoulder blades, sipping his coffee and reading on his phone. 

“How’re you doing?” Porthos asked, after twenty minutes when Aramis showed no signs of ungluing himself from the table, even as he began to relax.

Aramis shook his head with a moan. Porthos went to get the washcloth from the bathroom and wetted it with cool water, bringing it to rest against the back of Aramis’s neck. He got Aramis some water, made sure he drank it, got him an apple and sliced it up, then sat with him again and read. Aramis sat up and rested against Porthos’s shoulder, chewing idly on the apple, playing with Porthos’s earring, carefully, and running fingers over the tattoo on his forearm, down to his hand, knitting their fingers and examining their hands together, then starting over again. Porthos read bits aloud when he liked them. It was an old book he was reading, one they’d read to each other back then, back there, long nights in Afghanistan and Iraq, lying on their bunks side by side, heat and sand at the backs of their throat, fear and sweat and cordite, petrol, gun oil. Somehow, Orlando never quite writing poetry under an oak tree in England had been the escape they both wanted. Aramis had written poetry. Reams and reams of terrible poetry for all the women he met and hearts he broke, his own heart crumbling away in little pieces as he left them, never sure how to stay, clinging to Porthos instead. The man from the bathroom came into the kitchen and Eldoro leapt to her feet and skittered over tail wagging so hard it made her unbalanced. 

“I’m Athos,” the man said. “I live here.”

“Porthos,” Porthos said. “I don’t.”

Athos grunted and went to the kettle and made a pot of coffee. Porthos looked sadly into his own empty cup, then shut his eyes to savour the smell of the coffee wafting over from the cafetiere. Aramis stirred against him and sat up, holding Porthos’s shoulder to keep steady. 

“Can Porthos have some coffee, Athos?” Aramis said. 

“Obviously,” Athos said, and brought the pot over, pouring thick, dark liquid into Porthos’s mug. His lips quirked at the sound of appreciation Porthos made. 

“I’ll show you the house,” Aramis said. Then hesitated. “After the coffee.”

“I can bring it,” Porthos said. 

Aramis picked up Porthos’s bag and lead him out of the room and down the hall, pointing out the livingroom, and the conservatory where Athos’s piano lived. Athos didn’t, Aramis explained, play the piano, he just owned it. Aramis was welcome to use all the downstairs rooms. On the second floor was Aramis’s bedroom and the bathroom and then, two steps higher, another livingroom and bedroom that were Athos’s private spaces. And an attic. Aramis showed Porthos his bedroom, showed him the window out onto the garden, then curled up on the bed with a long, heavy sigh, dropping Porthos’s bag on the floor. Porthos went over to the desk and looked at Aramis’s work. There were the plans for the school out, Porthos recognised them long versed in the language of the architect’s draught thanks to Aramis, and familiar with these plans from Skype and phonecalls and texts. The margins were full of notes, these were early plans. Porthos found later ones, with photographs of fields, measurements, photographs of buildings. And a photograph of the man Aramis came here to work with. The man who, or so he had told Porthos, Aramis owed his live to. Treville. Just Treville. Builder and contractor, doing very well for himself out here, called in favours from Aramis. 

“Does it make you happy?” Porthos asked, examining the man who had pulled Aramis away from the city, away from Porthos, back here where it all began for Aramis. 

“No less so than London,” Aramis said. “Porthos, I’m not up to fighting you.”

“I’m not fighting,” Porthos said, dropping the photo, helpless with missing Aramis and wanting him home and wanting him, the ache in his chest and side and back from binding too tight too long blooming along his ribs and digging deeply into his heart, spikes of tension giving him a headache. 

“You should hydrate,” Aramis mumbled, half asleep. “Have a wash. Nap with me. Dinner. Fight tomorrow.”

“Have a bath with me,” Porthos said, on impulse.

“Don’t be absurd, it’s tiny,” Aramis said. “I’m knackered. Wash up, drink something, join me.”

He was asleep, then, exhaustion taking him over. Porthos went to stretch him out more comfortably, to cover him with a thin sheet, to look out of the window and sip his coffee. Athos was out there on the lawn, cross legged and playing with Eldoro. She might not have be Aramis’s but Aramis named her. Porthos could tell. He sighed. There were signs of Aramis settling here. Without Porthos. Porthos finished his coffee and looked around Aramis’s room, at the bed, the sofa, the arm chair, the desk. There were photos everywhere, Aramis’s way of keeping hold of memories he was always afraid of losing. Something loosened in Porthos as he looked through the stacks of photos, the frame on display. He was here after all. His books, too, on Aramis’s shelves. He’d been looking for his copy of the Hobbit and here it was, along-side his box-set of Swallows and Amazons, books he’d kept for his own children one day. A day that’ll never come, not realistically. He had had nieces and nephews and foster kids and school kids in mind, not necessarily children of his own, he would have liked to have the choice, though. To be able to choose to not have children. If it was the only option it was hardly a choice. Porthos’s Complete Works of Shakespeare was here, too. He checked Aramis’s closet and found a bunch of his clothes, and in the cupboard by the desk two of his sketchbooks, and under the duvet, head poking out against Aramis’s shoulder, the giraffe Aramis bought him nearly eight years ago now. 

Porthos, feeling a bit better knowing he was so firmly here, dug his water bottle out of his bag and went to refill it in the bathroom, and for a bath. He washed away the grime and sweat and mud and drank half a litre of water, and got out feeling refreshed. He sat in Aramis’s room for a while, watching Aramis sleep and soothing away bad dreams. When Aramis fell deeper and stayed there for half an hour, soundly and solidly asleep, Porthos got dressed and headed out into the garden. Athos was still out there, on the patio, a glass of wine in hand. He gestured Porthos welcome so Porthos sat in a garden chair nearby and sipped his water, shutting his eyes against the sun, against the headache still throbbing at his temples. 

“You and Aramis served together,” Athos said, eventually, after a long silence. 

“Yes,” Porthos said. “And you?”

“I met him when he got out, at the British Museum, at a party,” Athos said. “You stayed in?”

“Got out two years ago, now,” Porthos said. There was a pause. “Aramis got out after Savoy.” Another pause. “Thank you for giving him house-space.”

“He pays rent,” Athos said. Porthos grunted. Athos knew what Porthos meant. Which meant he was being a berk. Porthos sighed. “I like the company. Do you miss him?”

“More than you could ever imagine,” Porthos murmured. “But I manage.”

“You are welcome here, too. If you wanted. The garage is an annex, for guests. Everything needs fixing up but it’s not too bad. Treville does bits and pieces when he has the time.”

Porthos shut his eyes and imagined leaving London. He had imagined it every day since Aramis told him, fourteen months ago. Since Aramis gave him a mug of coffee one morning, sat him down, and said ‘I’m leaving, and you aren’t coming with me’. He had imagined just coming down here and being stubborn and … and what?

“No,” Porthos said. “Aramis doesn’t want that.”

“Hmph. Aramis can’t always have what he wants. Do you know what he suggested yesterday?” Athos said. “He suggested I dig up the vegetable patch at the bottom of the garden and put in a swimming pool! Then he went online and ordered a jacuzzi! I cancelled the order and made him go sit in the church until he found some sense.”

Porthos laughed, immensely pleased to hear about Aramis being a water-obsessed weirdo. He eagerly asked Athos for more stories and Athos indulged him, telling him what it was like to live with Aramis out here in the middle of nowhere. About the midnight forays into the garden and the pacing and the drawing at odd hours, about the way Aramis had planned out the kitchen on paper with a ruler, organised the tea drawers. Created the tea drawers. About Aramis making films of Athos and watching them with popcorn and making Athos watch with him. About playing scrabble and rummy and snakes and ladders. About Aramis putting on one man Shakespeare plays for no one but his own amusement. Porthos watched Athos, rapt, eating up the stories, the details of Aramis’s life. 

“You’re crying,” Athos said, coming to an abrupt halt. 

“Sorry,” Porthos said. “I’m happy. He rings me when he’s upset or stressed or struggling. For over a year I have had so little of his joy, so so little of anything good about him. This is wonderful. Thank you.”

“It isn’t good for you,” Athos said, scrutinizing Porthos. 

“No. That’s why he’s here. Recovering, getting help, doing a bit of healing. Last year was really hard for him. The one before he moved out here, I mean. A lot of stuff went down. It threw him off, now he’s got to get better again,” Porthos said. 

Athos nodded and got up, wandering back into the house. Porthos stayed out for a bit longer then trailed back up to the bedroom, taking off his clothes and curling naked against Aramis’s back, holding Aramis to him, cradling him. It was good to have Aramis in his arms, and the pain that had been all through him like a solid wedge for the last week or so dissolved. Porthos wept into Aramis’s hair and let himself sleep. He woke in Aramis’s arms, cradled in his turn, Aramis humming against his cheek and stroking his arm and shoulder and back. 

“Hi,” Aramis whispered. “Thank you so much, my love. For everything this year, and for this afternoon, and just for you.”

“Mmph,” Porthos said, mouth against Aramis’s chest, head held close. Aramis laughed and let him go a little, pulling him up so they were face to face, rubbing noses. 

“You have no clothing on,” Aramis whispered happily. 

“Nn,” Porthos agreed. 

“I joined you.”

Porthos made the grumpiest noise he could to indicate that talking was superfluous to requirements and Aramis made a pleased, amused noise, and then kissed him, warmly and deeply, steady and very present, now. He stroked Porthos’s cheek and then set about cuddling him thoroughly.


End file.
